Mother and child reunion - Paul Simon

When Paul Simon's eponymous second album appeared in 1972, this was the first single taken from it. It is a reggae song recorded in Jamaica and has impressive guitar and drum work. The title has its origin in a chicken-and-egg dish called "Mother and Child Reunion" that Simon claims he saw on a menu in a Chinese restaurant. The lyrics were inspired by the death of a pet dog that was run over and killed, the first death Simon had personally experienced. It made him begin to wonder how he would react if the same thing happened to his wife at the time, Peggy Harper. "Somehow there was a connection between this death and Peggy and it was like Heaven, I don't know what the connection was" Simon told Rolling Stone at the time of its release. The song was recorded at Dynamic Sounds Studios, Torrington Bridge, Kingston, Jamaica, with Jimmy Cliff's backing group. Guitarist Huks ("Hux") Brown and bass guitarist Jackie Jackson were also long-time members of Toots & the Maytals. Cissy Houston is one of the four backing singers. Unusually, Simon recorded the music first then wrote and added the lyrics subsequently. He had previously wanted to make "Why Don't You Write Me" – recorded with Art Garfunkel on Bridge over Troubled Water – sound Jamaican but it ended up sounding like a "bad imitation" and the idea was abandoned. Simon was instructed by the musicians during the recording on the differences between reggae, ska and bluebeat. He felt awkward at first being "the only white guy there" and an American. He later overdubbed piano and vocals to the track, back in New York.

Beautiful Day - U2

Probably the Irish band U2's best album is their tenth, All that you can't leave behind. Released in 2000, its opening track is Beautiful Day, also released as a very successful single. The distinctive percussive guitar sound is a reversion to earlier hits. The song won various prestigious awards and is apparently a concert favourite. It went through various incarnations before emerging in its final form, the genesis being a chord sequence written by lead singer Bono and adapted by guitarist, The Edge. The band got bogged down with the song at one stage but producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois took things forward by introduing a drum machine, a piano part, synthesised strings and a new guitar part. Near the end of a 20-minute jam of the song, Bono sang, "It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away". After lunch, this impromptu vocal became the song's chorus. The Edge also added a high backing vocal and Lanois a lower wimoweh vocal. These were doubled and processed by Eno. The later mix, which included work by Steve Lillywhite, added a Bono guitar part. The bass line was also changed and some of the guitar work. The song ended up with four different time signatures. It opens with reverberating electric piano over a string synthesiser. The progression set up continues throughout the verses and chorus. After the opening line, "The heart is a bloom", the rhythm enters. In verse 1, Bono's vocals are in the front of the mix. About 30 seconds in a guitar arpeggio pattern first appears, echoing across the channels. The verses are relatively quiet until the chorus, when the Edge begins playing the song's guitar riff and the drums enter. During the chorus, Bono sings in a restrained manner, contrasting with the Edge's loud background vocals and the sustain on "day". After the second chorus, a bridge section begins, heightening the track's emotion as Bono sings "Touch me. Take me to that other place".The bridge links to the middle eight with a section in which the Edge repeats a modulated two note phrase on guitar. After seven seconds, the rhythm breaks and the middle eight begins. The lyrics for this section are in space, above Earth, as it were and views China, the Grand Canyon, tuna fleets and Bedouin fires, oil fields, etc. I especially like the biblical reference to "the bird with a leaf in her mouth after the flood", After a third chorus and a return of the bridge section, the song suddenly ends in a "low-key" fashion; most of the instrumentation stoping as a regeneration of a guitar signal drifts back and forth between channels before fading. According to Bono, it is about "a man who has lost everything, but finds joy in what he still has."

Bridge from heart to heart - Horslips

Bridge from heart to heart is a rare Horslips track that was a B-side to Speed the Plough in 1978, sharing the honours with a live version of Red river rock. There was also an EP in Ireland called Tour-A-Loor-A-Loor-A-Loor-A-Loor-A with four tracks including this one. Horslips shared vocals and I'm not sure which one takes the lead here. I'm guessing Barry Devlin. It is a simple song, upbeat but with a dark theme, what appears to be the death of a loved one. The opening reference to  athree thousand mile gap, however, suggests the real theme is the Irish emigration. It is reminiscent a little of Ghosts in that respect. Halfway through there is a beautiful flute lead from Jim Lockhart. The flute then continues to the close of the song. As so often with Horslips the underlying tune is a traditional Irish one, this time a tune called Carrickfergus.

Cross a weary three thousand miles
Your face is with me every hour
I saved your love, it's all I've got to stay alive
And standing at these bright cross roads you feel the glory in the power
But I feel I've left the mystery far behind

First thing every morning when the mailman comes to call
Think I hear your footsteps in the hall
And they build a bridge from heart to heart
They'll see the ways of other lovers
When they build that bridge

They'll know that we all ready tried
The nights are long without you here
The days go by like heavy weather
The feeling lasts, I'm only biding time
When all I see is cold and lonely streets
We're still somehow together
It's cold tonight but your still on my mind

Woodland Rock - T Rex

Woodland Rock first appeared in 1971 as the 'B' side of Hot Love. Not to be confused with the earlier Woodland Bop, this is one of the first tracks recorded wth Steve Currie on bass. In many ways it is a very old fashioned stop start rock'n'roll number (based on Long Tall Sally no doubt, although Jailhouse Rock may be in there somewhere too). Despite the title, the lyrics are not particularly pastoral. Bolan often used a capo and a slightly different tuning to get the sound he wanted. There has also been some electronic jiggery-pokery from the producer Tony Visconti. The guitars appear to be going backwards at some points as on the Beatles track Rain.

Foot Tapper - The Shadows

Human beings have many ways to communicate, including the tap of the foot. Of course, such foot tapping can be for illicit reasons. Feet will often tap in response to music with a beat and that is the context here. A foot tapper is a song with a good beat. The name has been appropriated by The Shadows for one of their many instrumentals.  Written by Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch, this one was Number 1 in the UK in 1963. It was originally written at the request of Jacques Tati (he had seen them in Paris in 1961 and liked them) but was not used by him as Tati hit difficulties and did not release his next film until 1967. Instead, in 1963, the Shadows had a small role in the Cliff RIchard film Summer Holiday and producer Peter Yates used it for the radio music in the bus scene. It was then released as a double 'A' side with the pop standard "The Breeze and I". The whole thing is very tight and well arranged and works well. It does what it says on the tin. Brian Bennett on drums shines. It is hard not to tap your foot to it. It became well known later as the signature tune and closing theme for BBC Radio 2's Sounds of the Sixties from 1983 until 2017 when presenter Brian Matthew left.

Jokerman - Bob Dylan

Jokerman is the opening track on Bob Dylan's 1983 album, the much less preachy Infidels, his follow up to a trilogy of Christian albums. Recorded on April 14, 1983, it was released as a single on June 1, 1984, but was not successful. It is often regarded as one of Dylan's best songs, especially since his sixties heyday. It has excellent ingredients - a good tune, excellent musicians (Mark Knopfler, Mick Taylor, etc), that distinctive voice and some trademark harmonica, Nobel laureate standard lyrics. The lyrics are full of biblical imagery (Standing on the waters casting your bread, Sodom and Gomorrah, Leviticus and Deuteronomy) and have been understood as a political metaphor, perhaps referring to Ronald Reagan. The video made for the sing includes photographs of historical figures such as Hitler, Reagan, Muhammed Ali and Dylan himself with paintings by Bosch, Goya and Dürer.

Woodstock - Matthews Southern Comfort

For a song very much if its era you would have to look hard to find a better candidate than Woodstock, first performed live in 1969. The song was written by Joni Mitchell (and is the B-side of Big Yellow Taxi) but several notable versions immeditately threatened to eclipse the original. In the USA, there was the version by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (which initially had input from Jimi Hendrix) and in the UK, the modified version by the short lived Matthews' Southern Comfort, the most successful commercially. The lyrics reference the famous Woodstock Music and Arts Festival of 1969 and tell the story of a concert-goer on a trek to attend the festival at Max Yasgur's farm. Mitchell was unable to perform at the festival, having been advised that a TV appearance was preferable, but heard all about it through her then boyfriend Graham Nash, who had performed there. She wrote the song in a New York hotel while watching TV reports of the festival. David Crosby for one felt she had captured the feeling and importance of the Woodstock festival better than anyone who had actually been there. Among the most interesting lyrics, apart from the anti-war message, are the references in the chorus to "We are stardust, we are golden/We are billion-year-old carbon" and "and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden". The first picks up on the idea of modern science which teaches that we are largely made up of elements made in the stars billions of years ago. The second phrase references the Eden of the Bible lost in the Fall. Of course, the problem is that we cannot get ourselves back there, we need salvation from God. "We are caught in the devil's bargain" is another lyric worth pondering.